The Spider's Web

by Ben Cheetham

  Footsteps moved away from the Land Rover. Her straining ears caught what sounded like a key turning in a lock. There was the dull thud of a door being closed. She waited a minute or two to make sure her ears weren’t misleading her. Then, cautious as a rabbit leaving the safety of a burrow, she slid from beneath the tarp and ducked down behind the trailer. The Land Rover was parked at the end of a rutted track, its edges overgrown with brambles and nettles. Behind her and to her right, pines marched in two rows that formed a right angle at the gate. To her left was a grassy field, enclosed by barbed wire and thick hedgerows, and dotted with vehicles in various states of disrepair. There was another Land Rover, its axles resting on bricks, the guts of its engine scattered over the ground. And there were two vans – a newish-looking red Ford Escort, and an ancient Transit, so eaten up with rust that its white paintwork was barely visible. She felt a clutching sensation around her throat. Was it the same van Gavin had thrown Jessica into the back of?

  The smell of woodsmoke tickled Anna’s nostrils. To the right of the Transit was a bare patch of scorched earth with a metal barrel-like structure about one and a half metres tall at its centre. Smoke seeped from the edges of a lid that sloped to a central point like a Chinese peasant’s hat. A charcoal kiln. That explained the trailer of logs. Beyond the Land Rover was a small, grey, two-storey cottage with a slate roof, grimy windows and a door that had been daubed with a crude rainbow of paint. A couple of rotten-looking dead rabbits were hanging from a hook on the door. Anna spotted some movement in a downstairs window. She jerked back behind the trailer as Gavin’s weathered face appeared at the glass. Shit! Had he seen her? Long moments passed. Nothing happened. She released a slow but shaky breath and considered her next move. Should she wait for back-up or should she move in closer to the spider’s lair?

  14

  ‘I’ve just passed Calverton,’ Jim said loudly into his phone, then the line died again. Where had Anna said she was? All he’d been able to make out was, I’m… Ed… He tried calling her back, but got an answering service. He expelled a sharp breath of frustration. He knew the bus’s final destination was Ollerton, but he didn’t know the exact route it took to get there. Reluctantly, he pulled over and brought up the bus timetable on his phone. He was glad he’d done so when he saw that the bus took a minor detour through Edwinstowe and Sherwood Forest before arriving at Ollerton. It took the bus fifty-two minutes to get from Nottingham to Edwinstowe. Almost exactly the same amount of time had passed since Anna had first called him that morning. So that had to be where she was. His phone rang. He answered it quickly, expecting it to be Anna.

  Garrett’s voice came over the line. ‘Good news, Jim. I managed to get hold of Sharon Walsh’s health records. She was diagnosed with endometriosis in 1996. She’s infertile. Emily can’t be her daughter.’

  Instead of replying, Jim accelerated hard back into the road.

  ‘Hello? Are you there?’ asked Garrett.

  ‘Yes,’ Jim said flatly, concentrating on overtaking a car.

  ‘I thought you’d sound more pleased. This should be enough to get a warrant for DNA.’

  ‘I am pleased, but something’s going down here.’ Jim quickly filled Garrett in on the situation.

  ‘That sounds promising. Very promising. Do you want me to send over a helicopter?’

  ‘No. If Emily is meeting Gavin, that’ll only send him scurrying back to whatever hole he’s been hiding in. We need to keep a low profile.’

  ‘OK, but I’m going to contact the local police and put them on alert.’

  ‘You can’t do that. We can’t afford to risk Villiers getting wind of this.’

  Garrett was silent a moment, then he said, ‘You’re playing a dangerous game, Jim.’

  ‘Yeah, well it’s the only game I’ve got left.’

  Jim cut off the call and focused all his attention on the road. The bus took just under half an hour to travel from Farnsfield, which was a few miles north of him, to Edwinstowe. He figured he could cover the same ground in maybe two-thirds of the time. First the fields on his left, then those on his right gave way to trees. He passed through them into Edwinstowe. He scanned the quiet streets for Anna’s camper van. Beyond the village the trees closed in again. He spotted the van near the entrance to a car park. Spurred on by an ever-increasing sense of urgency, he pulled in behind it and jumped out of the car. Surely there was only one reason for Emily to get off the bus here – to meet someone away from prying eyes.

  He peered into the van. As expected, it was empty. He ran across the car park to the bus shelter, his gaze scouring the trees. At the far side of the car park was a path. To the left it led back towards Edwinstowe. To the right it wound gently through the trees to the visitor centre. It didn’t seem likely that Emily would have headed back to the village. He followed the sign for the visitor centre. Moving more cautiously now, he checked out the café and exhibits. Anna and Emily were nowhere to be seen. Emily must have headed further into the forest, he reasoned. Assuming, of course, she’d come this way at all. He approached a man painting one of the buildings and flashed his ID. ‘Have you seen a girl pass by here? She’s fifteen years old, blonde, slim, about five three.’

  ‘No, sorry,’ replied the man.

  Jim asked the same question in the café. ‘Yes, I think I’ve seen her,’ answered the woman behind the counter. ‘She poked her head in here about half an hour or so ago. She looked like she was looking for someone.’

  ‘Did you see where she went?’

  The woman shook her head. Jim thanked her and returned outside. If Emily had stuck to the path, there were only two ways she could have gone – either back to the car park or towards the Major Oak. He headed for the Major Oak. Numerous smaller paths branched off the main one into the trees. After about ten minutes’ walk, the path broadened into a clearing with the Major Oak – a squat, fat tree, its broad-spreading branches supported by metal struts – at one side and a picnic area at the other. Two women were sitting at a table, one of them feeding a baby. Jim described Anna and Emily to them. They hadn’t seen either. He looked about himself uncertainly. Beyond the clearing the path looped back towards the visitor centre. It seemed more likely to him that Emily would have headed deeper into the forest.

  His phone vibrated as a message came through. It was from Anna. He opened it. A photo of the sign to the visitor centre appeared. It had been sent at 11:21. Forty-six minutes ago. Another message arrived. A photo of the sign for the Major Oak sent fifteen minutes after the first. Anna was obviously pointing him in the direction of Emily. He tried phoning her. No answer. There seemed little point in continuing blindly along the path. Better to wait and see if Anna sent more photos. He hunkered down against a tree at the edge of the clearing. A couple of minutes passed. A third photo arrived. It was of a broken old oak tree. The edge of one of the visitor centre buildings was visible in the top left of the photo.

  As Jim ran back along the path, more photos landed in his inbox. They showed a faint path leading through the trees. The broken tree wasn’t difficult to locate. He glanced inside its hollow trunk and studied the ground around it. There were no signs of footprints. But then the ground was dry and blanketed with dead leaves. About fifty metres from the tree he came across a clump of bracken with several flattened fronds. The position matched the angle from which the photo of the tree had been taken. His eyes continued roaming the ground and found what they were looking for – the faint path. He set off along it.

  The deeper into the forest he got, the denser the undergrowth became. Several times it threatened to swallow the path, forcing him to pause until he spotted some point of reference from one of the photos. After about a quarter of an hour he came to a grassy track. At its nearest edge there were tyre marks in the soft turf. He frowned. Had Emily got into a vehicle with someone? If so, how had Anna followed them? He judged the main road to be somewhere away to his right. The tyre tracks led in the opposite direction, petering out after several metres. Yet a
nother photo arrived on his phone. He wasn’t surprised to see an image of the track. It was blurry as though it had been taken whilst in motion. A dark line slanted across the top of it. Looking to his right, he picked out several trees that appeared in the photo. Had it been taken facing backwards in a vehicle? Maybe the line was the rim of a window.

  It had been sent at 12:06. Jim swore through his teeth. He was still twenty-five minutes behind Anna. If she and Emily were in a vehicle, they could be miles away by now. In which case, there was no point him continuing the pursuit on foot. He turned to head back to the main road along the track. He’d only taken a couple of steps when his phone rang. It was Reece. He hesitated to answer the call. But the thought came to him, What if something’s happened to Staci? What if she’s died? After Margaret’s murder, Reece had been there for him day and night. If not for him, he might well have done something stupid like thrown himself off a cliff. He had to at least make sure his friend wasn’t on the verge of some similarly distraught act. He put the phone to his ear and, trying to keep the dread out of his voice, asked, ‘How’s things?’

  ‘I’m on my way home from East Midlands Airport,’ replied Reece. ‘Staci’s on a flight to Cape Town.’ The uneven breathing of someone struggling to hold it together filled the line. ‘I’m wondering if I’ll ever see her again.’

  Jim wished he could reassure Reece that he would. But he knew it was better to say nothing at all than give empty reassurances. ‘Yeah, you must be. But listen, Reece, I can’t talk right now. I think I might be on to something big. I may even be close to finding Spider.’

  ‘No shit. Where are you?’

  ‘Sherwood Forest.’

  ‘I’m not far from there. I’m just coming up to junction twenty-eight on the M1. I can be at the forest in twenty-five minutes. Half an hour tops.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’

  ‘Course I fucking am. Besides, what else am I going to do? Go home and cry into a mug of tea?’

  A faint smile passed over Jim’s lips. If he had to tackle Gavin, it certainly wouldn’t do any harm to have the big man backing him up. ‘OK. Head to the visitor centre car park. I probably won’t be there. I’m trying to catch up with Anna. She’s tailing Emily Walsh.’

  ‘Who’s Emily Walsh?’

  ‘There’s no time to explain now. Call me when you get to the car park.’

  Jim pocketed his phone and started jogging in the direction of the main road. The track arched gently away from where he was parked, but he wanted to be certain of where it met the road. As he ran, photos continued to come in. Assuming the perspective was skewed by Anna taking them facing backwards, one appeared to show a left turn in the track, another a right, then a second right, then a left. As before, a dark line cut off the upper portion of the photos. That decided Jim. Anna had either managed to sneak in, or been captured and forced into, the back of whatever vehicle Emily was in. As she seemed to have her hands free, the former struck him as more likely. She surely wouldn’t have been able to avoid discovery in a car. Perhaps the vehicle was a van of some sort. Creases gathered on his brow. Perhaps it was a van similar to the one that had been used to abduct Jessica Young.

  Then came a photo of a padlocked farm gate. A padlock meant private land, and private land could mean a house. The photo had been sent at 12:21. Less than five minutes ago. Which meant Emily might have been taken to a house or some other property within roughly fifteen minutes’ drive of where he was standing. He dialled Anna again. This time she picked up! He opened his mouth to ask, Where are you? But before he could do so her voice came down the line in an intense whisper. ‘I’ve found him. I’m at the fucker’s house.’

  By him Anna could only mean one person – Gavin! ‘Is Emily with him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m on the forest track close to the main road. How far away are you?’

  ‘Maybe four or five—’ The line broke up briefly, then Anna’s voice came back through. ‘—you take a left, then, after about half a mile, a right, then a quick right…’

  Again, Anna’s voice faded out of hearing. ‘Stay right where you are,’ said Jim. ‘Do not try to apprehend Gavin yourself. Do you hear?’

  There was no reply. The line went dead. Jim quickened his pace, suppressing his rising excitement, reminding himself that a spider wasn’t caught until it was caught.

  Emily’s step faltered as she neared the cottage’s front door. Her nose wrinkled at the two dead rabbits dangling against its garishly colourful surface. The sickly scent of rot they gave off suggested they’d been there for some time. As did the maggots infesting their grey-brown fur. ‘What are they there for?’ she asked, revulsion thickening her voice.

  ‘To keep away unwanted visitors,’ said Gavin, opening the door.

  Emily glanced around herself. Unwanted visitors? She couldn’t imagine Gavin got any visitors at all. There wasn’t another house in sight. She followed him into a gloomy, low-ceilinged hallway with a stone-flagged floor, dirty-white walls and a flight of carpetless stairs. To her right was a closed door. At the far end of the hallway a table with what looked like a thick butcher’s chopping board on it was visible through an open door. A musky smell of incense hung in the air. Gavin locked the front door, then hung his jacket on a peg. Underneath it he was wearing a faded baggy black t-shirt tucked into the waistband of his camouflaged trousers. A long, wooden-handled knife was holstered on his waist. Noticing Emily looking at it, he patted the handle. ‘This is my skinning knife. I catch and kill all the meat I eat myself. When you eat an animal, you absorb some of its spirit too. If you only eat domestic meat, then you’ll be tame and domestic. If you only eat wild meat, you’ll become like the animals of the forest – wild and healthy, and most importantly, free.’

  Gavin moved through the closed door into a narrow living room that ran the length of the house. Light filtered through small, dusty windows at either end of the room. To the left of the door was a threadbare sofa facing a stone fireplace heaped with the remnants of a fire. A scorched kettle hung above the ashes. The hearth was stacked high with chopped logs, some of which had toppled onto a goatskin rug. To one side of the fireplace were some rough home-made shelves piled with books. On the wall above it there was a carving of a bearded face with staring eyes, pointed ears and curving horns. The walls were littered with dozens of similar carvings. In some the man appeared to have leaves sprouting from his face. In others the face wasn’t that of a man at all, but looked more like a goat or a stag. One particular carving caught Emily’s eyes. It depicted a figure with cloven hooves and shaggy hairy legs attached to a muscular torso and horned head. The man – if that’s what it was – was sitting cross-legged and in his arms he held a naked, long-haired girl. The girl’s breasts were small. Her body and limbs were slender. She dangled limply in the man’s arms. The man looked not at the girl, but straight back at Emily. There was nothing lewd in his expression, just a kind of remorseless blankness.

  ‘The carvings are a hobby of mine,’ said Gavin. ‘Do you like them?’

  No, they give me the creeps, thought Emily. But she didn’t say it for fear of offending Gavin. Instead she gave a non-committal shrug.

  ‘You know who he is, don’t you?’ continued Gavin.

  Recalling what he’d said at the hollow tree, Emily replied, ‘The Horned God.’

  Gavin nodded. ‘He is the Lord of Nature. He gives us everything and all he asks in return is that we honour him.’ His voice sharpened with contempt. ‘Unlike the false gods of the Christians and Muslims, he does not ask us to kneel. He asks us to indulge in every pleasure we desire. For our bodies are his bodies. And so our pleasure is his pleasure.’

  Emily shifted uneasily as the thought came to her, What if your only pleasure is hurting others? What then? Again, she couldn’t bring herself to speak her mind. Not because she was worried about offending Gavin this time, but because she was afraid what answer he would give. Besides, she hadn’t come here to talk about this
shit. She’d come here to find out who she was. ‘Anna Young said something about our parents not being what they seem. What did she mean?’

  Gavin stared at her, stroking his beard thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps it would be best if I begin by explaining why Dad stopped bringing you to the forest. Like you said, it wasn’t because you stopped wanting to come. It was because he thought it was too dangerous.’

  ‘Because of the McLeans?’

  Gavin’s eyes grew heavy-lidded. He looked at Emily for another moment, as if savouring some thought. ‘No, not because of the McLeans. Because of—’

  Breaking off, he reached into a trouser pocket and withdrew a vibrating phone. He put it to his ear, but said nothing. Deep furrows formed on his tanned forehead. Shoving the phone back into his pocket, he wheeled around to peer out the front window.

  ‘Who was that?’ Emily asked as Gavin bobbed his head as though trying to get a look at something.

  ‘Stay here,’ he retorted, turning to head for the door.

  Emily followed him into the hallway. ‘What’s going on?’

  Gavin hastened towards the rear of the house, pausing only to shoot her a backwards glance. His voice came in a growl of warning. ‘I said fucking well stay here!’

  She flinched to a halt, the uncertainty that had been in her eyes since meeting Gavin tipping towards outright fear. His words of a moment earlier returned to her. No, not because of the McLeans. Because of— And suddenly she knew what he’d been about to say. Because of me. He was the reason their dad had stopped bringing her to the forest. He was the one who made it dangerous. What was he? she wondered. Some kind of pervert who couldn’t – or wouldn’t – control his urges? More to the point, did she really want to hang around and find out? Her gaze returned to the carving of the Horned God and the girl. It answered the question for her – no. Sure, she was desperate to find out the truth of who she was. But she wasn’t so desperate as to risk ending up like that.